Key MappingWhen you open Ascent to the game launcher, there should be 2 tabs. One called 'Graphics' and another called 'Input'. You should by default be on the graphics tab, so click on the input tab. There are 3 column, one cannot be changed and displays what action will be caused by the keys listed in the same row. The primary column and secondary column are where you can edit the controls. To edit a key, double click on the one you want to edit then a small window should come up saying 'Press a button or key for (key binding you are editing)'. Gravity AnchorWhen you start, gravity anchor will probably be on.
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You can tell by looking at the color of the anchor in the bottom right corner. If it's red, gravity anchor is off. If it is green, gravity anchor should be on. Gravity anchor prevents your ship from being affected by gravity. When it is on, your speed limit is capped at around 300-500 m/s. Turning off gravity anchor will allow your ship to get pulled towards planets and other objects with gravity, and will allow you to go fast as you want without a speed limit.
It also allows most ships to turn faster. AutopilotOn the left of the screen, you should see an autopilot button. This is you use to get around much faster, as well as interact with objects like docking at space stations and using jumpgates. Clicking on the name of the object on autopilot will take you to that object. Clicking on the button directly below that, if there is any, will let you warp closer to a planet or other celestial body, and/or allow you to interact with space stations and such.
You can see how much energy is left in your capacitor in the bottom right corner, however you probably won't see any there unless you are not at full capacitor energy. Currently, the only systems in sector 0 which have full sized planets are Janus A and Ceres. StarmapTo view the starmap, click on the MAP button at the top of the screen or press Esc.
Systems connected with light blue lines are the paths of jump gates that connect all systems in sector 0. Sector 0 is sector 0, 0, 0 according the starmap, which only has manually placed star systems. Any systems outside of that have procedurally generated everything. Sector 0 has many other names such as 'Apollo Cluster', 'Core Systems', or 'Inner Systems. Systems that connect an inner system to an outer system (a system outside of the Apollo Cluster), or connect an outer system to an outer system are marked with purple gates.
Tutoria ColonyWhen you start the flight tutorial, you should see a rather small colony to the far right of you, labeled 'Tutoria'. You can fly over to it and look around. It consists of a couple of residential towers by the shore, and a large line of transport grids leading up to the main colony, which consists of 3 environmental domes, and a stock market, which is the yellow tower with a green beacon in the middle of all 3 domes. There is also a fourth and fifth dome underwater more close to where you spawn into the tutorial. The Call For HelpWhen you start, you will be hearing a distress call from SS Archimedes. Click on autopilot and click on the (dock) button under SS Archimedes.
After you are done with that, click on the Contracts Board button that is flashing red. There should be a contract saying 'Susan Steele needs to get back to her farms on Ceres with her son. She will pay 1,000 credits.' Click on the contract, and click Accept Contract, now, undock and go to autopilot, then click on the (jump) button under the Ceres Jumpgate button.
Once you are in Ceres, dock at SS Andromeda. Once you are docked, Susan Steele will give you 10 grain. Now undock and jump back to Vulcan. Once in Vulcan, dock at SS Archimedes. Open the local market and sell all of your grain. Now, go back to SS Andromeda in Ceres and buy grain, then sell it at SS Archimedes in Vulcan. Keep doing this until starvation on Vulcan ends.
When you end starvation, Ian Whitaker will aboard your ship. Jump to Apollo and Take him to SS Plato.
Once at Apollo, you then will receive 300 seeds, which you must take to SS Orion in Ubertas. You will be told to buy mining robots from Vulcan, and take 10 to Ceres, 10 to Apollo, and 10 to Ubertas. So go to Vulcan and buy 10 mining robots from SS Archimedes. Take those 10 robots to Ceres. By delivering the robots you will earn a grain farm blueprint. Go to the contracts board and accept the contract titled 'Susan Steele wants you to track down her daughter.' We will get into this later.
Look around the systems Ubertas, Pomona, Vestra, Sol Invictus, Vulcan, Ceres, and Veritas. Don't go into Janus A yet. Check all the contracts boards for mining robots, but make sure you have enough money. You should have enough money however because from taking the robots to Ceres, you should have enough to get 20 more mining robots. If you run short on money.
Try mining asteroids and selling your resources. If you need help mining, check the chapter of this guide about mining and salvaging.
Ignore everything related to the side contract of Susan Steele finding her daughter. Rift valley fever virus. We will get into that next, but it's a lot harder if you haven't completed the part of the tutorial about ending starvation.
Delivering robots to Apollo will earn you a Ceres deed. You will receive 3 mining robots. For now you can store them in the item hangar of any station. If you forgot where you put them, click on the 'Character' button on the bottom of the screen and click Assets. From here you can view how much credits and Stellar Credits you have, as well as how what items, modules and ships you have on the surface of every inner planet deed like the Ceres deed(if you own the deed), as well as on space stations and any where else except outer starbases and colonies where you can store items. Scooping and miningAfter you have the mining robots stored, you need to go mine Siderolite asteroids until you have atleast 5 silicon, which you will need to take to Ubertas. Veritas is preferred for mining, because less people are usually there than in Vulcan, and both systems have pretty much the same asteroid fields, except the one in Veritas might be bigger and might have rarer asteroids, due to it being used less.
To get to the field in Veritas quickly, click on autopilot and click on SS Elysium, but don't click on dock. Just warping to the station without docking will take you to the field. Now get that 5 silicon.
Check out the chapter on mining and salvaging for more in depth guide on how to mine, but basically, get within 1000 meters of a Siderolite asteroid, and hold left mouse button. Wait until the beam is blue, but don't wait too long or you will burn the asteroid. You will most likely get over 5 silicon and some iron from doing this.
You can sell the iron, and sell the appropriate amount of silicon so you only have 5 left. Head back over to Ubertas with your silicon and dock at SS Orion. Now you need to go scoop a gas giant for oxygen. The help page for gas giant skimming will open up. You can read all about gas giant skimming here, or just exit it and go do it yourself. There is a green giant behind the planet, so turn off gravity anchor and fly towards it.
The faster your ship is going towards the gas giant, the more hydrogen you will scoop from it. Make sure you are skimming the dark green band at the equator of it.
When you touch the atmosphere of the gas giant, you will scoop some amount of gas as long as your ship is going fast enough. Now return to Ubertas to sell your gas.
If your contracts list in the upper right says you still need silicon, and Susan Steele isn't accepting the oxygen, try going to the shipyard and back to refresh your contracts list. Now you can go build grain farms, or we can continue on with the other storyline involving Susan Steele's daughter. Meanwhile with your extra oxygen, you can do whatever you want with it, such as storing it. Ventures to Deep-6If you haven't already, accept the contract from Ceres about Susan Steele finding her daughter. If you already have, then you should have already delivered the note to Ubertas while you were delivering your silicon and gas. Now head on over to Ceres.
A quick way to do this is by going to the starmap (press M, Esc, or click on the MAP button) and click emergency jump. This will take you to Ceres without any cost or anything.
Now head over to Ubertas, where you can buy the location to deep-6. And it looks like it costs 750,000 credits. Might seem impossible, but lets look into some ways to achieve that. With your current credits, buy a sparrow. Click on the hangar at the space station and get into your Sparrow.
We will need it's increased cargo hold for this part.Now, jump to Pomona. From there, jump to Miner's Paradise, and from Miner's Paradise jump to Adolphus.
Adolphus is a great mining system with an asteroid field with 3 asteroid types; Autunite, Colombite, and Angrite, which are also the 3 most valuable asteroids in the game besides for the legendary Promethicite asteroid, which has a 1% chance of spawning in place of an autunite, colombite or angrite asteroid. You also may notice that once you enter Miner's Paradise, things are different. First, you here background music. Second, you see tons of colonies, which have light blue names and often have a (starbase). This is because you are no longer in sector 0 and are now in deep space.
If you see 'Planned gate to Miner's Paradise' instead of a Miner's Paradise jumpgate, the only way to get out of here to use your emergency jump, or a hyperdrive when you get one. Because of this, it may be arguably better to mine in Haven, which is also a gate in Miner's Paradise. For now, just mine all the asteroids you want in Adolphus, but angrites and colombites are the most profitable. When you mine an asteroid, eject anything but the uranium, tin and niobium. To eject cargo, press ctrl + c to open the computer. Then type in 'ch eject (amount) (item)'. Then press ctrl + c again or type 'close' to close the computer.
If ejecting things over and over gets boring, then you can set an alias. Open the computer and type 'alias add (key) ch eject (number) (item)'. An example of this is 'alias add ctrl1 ch eject 999999 silicon'. This would eject 999999 silicon when you press ctrl + 1, so in other words all of your silicon. You can do this to other items to like iron. Colombites are probably the easiest to do.
Alternatively, you can buy cheap carbon from people's stock markets and sell them to the core systems. DO NOT buy carbon dioxide by mistake. To check the stock markets, go to the map, click Stock Market Search, and change the boxes like so; Change the range to 9+ sectors. This is so you get a wider range of results. Change the buy/sell box and make sure it says 'sell' instead of 'buy'.
In the text box, type 'carbon', and finally click search. Commander DixonCurrently, you can no longer start the game being a combat user, so when you click New Game, you need to click on the autopilot button, and click the (jump) button under 'Jumpgate to Apollo'. When in Apollo, do the same thing except go to Janus A to start the combat missions. When you begin, you will be hailed by Commander Dixon, and there will be an 'Open Contract Board' under the autopilot button.
You will see you can buy blueprints, but just ignore those for now. Click the pink contract that says '(storyline)Destroy a cargo scanner drone in Janus A for UNCA'. Click it, then click the accept contract button.
UberiUberi is a small system with 2 habitable planets. Both are similar, but Mining Planet 1 in the system is toxic for all food but has an ocean, while Rocky Planet (12) is fertile for fruit but has no ocean. Mining Planet 1, which was discovered before Rocky Planet (12), has worse stats than Rocky Planet (12). Mining Planet 1 has 18% carbon, geo 4, and around 5-8% silicon.
Rocky Planet (12) on the other hand has 22% carbon, geo 5, and around 3% silicon, along with being fertile for fruit making it self sustaining. Rocky Planet (12) also has lower gravity than Mining Planet 1, low enough to the point where it may be one day possible to terraform it. The system in addition has a Ureilite and Angrite field, making it decent for promethium farming. A galactic highway might later be created from this system. A good planetFirst, find a planet with high carbon and low silicon. Silicon is unmineable and wouldn't be very good even if it was, and carbon is the most valuable and used for the production of superconducting coils and graphene.
Check the 'Where do I colonize' chapter for more information on colonizing locations. Anyway, you would also like a high geo. Never colonize a planet with 1 or 2 geo unless you aren't planning on using it to harvest resources.
The higher the geo means the resources are more dense in pockets rather than spread out evenly. 3 should be the very bare minimum, but don't go with it if you want to make a major mining outpost. Geo 4 is the least you should be striving for.
5 is the highest it can go. Back to resources in general. You will want a planet with atleast 15% carbon, no more than 10% silicon, and also you want to make sure it has atleast some concentration of other resources. Not a necessity but a bonus is food. If a planet is toxic for a type of food, that type can't be grown there at all.
If it's poor, that food can be grown there, but farms won't give you too much, and you will likely just get barely enough to feed your colonists. Fertile means that food can be grown there in great abundance. Common Class M Main Sequence: This is the most common star type. They are usually very small and red, and have very low luminosity, radius and mass. Class M's aren't really special in any way.
They have around a 50% chance of having an asteroid field, and often have anywhere between 0 and 20 planets.Class K Main Sequence: These bright yellow-ish stars are a lot like class M stars, but are rarer, and have much higher luminosity, mass and radius, but are typically still below 1, usually around 0.5.Class F Main Sequence: These orange stars are like class K stars, but have stats greater than 1 and tend to not have asteroid fields as often. These systems also seem to have no less than 10 bodies.Class G Main Sequence: These yellow stars are sunlike stars. They usually have luminosity, radius and mass between 0.8 and 1.2.Class A Main Sequence: These white stars aren't too common, but are small. They tend to have a mass and radius between 1 and 2, but with a high luminosity.Class B Main Sequence: These stars are uncommon, and light blue. They have radius and mass usually several times more than 1, and have a luminosity stat which often is several hundred.Class O Main Sequence: These deep blue stars are one of the rarest stars which can still be considered common. It may take a considerable amount of time to find one of these.Class M Giant: Like all giants, class M giants have very high mass, radius, and luminosity which is over 100.Class F Giant: Like class M giant, but much bigger radius, usually twice as much mass, and luminosity which is over 100,000.Class G Giant: Very similar to the class F giant.Class A Giant: Even though these still go under the common class of stars (normal star types, main sequences and giants), these stars are probably the rarest in the game.
They are big and white, and you are lucky if you find an unexplored one. Not much is known about these due to how rare they are to come across.Class B Giant: Giant light blue stars are usually smaller than most other giants, although have similar stats, although they are usually a little bit higher.Class O Giant: The giant variants of these stars actually seem to be more common than the main sequence variant. They are likely normal giants, but have higher radius, and a luminosity which is over 200,000. Rare Black Hole Main Sequence: Black holes are very rare star types. They appear grey on the star map, and are small.
These systems are really strange. They only have 1 star, gas giants and moons. No rocky planets. When you enter, you will encounter 'Greg', a broken pirate ship using the old ladybug ship module. You may also encounter camera glitchiness around asteroid fields and other bodies. The black hole itself is no bigger than space debris.
When you start swinging around it, it often says you are near 'Gas Giant Scaler'.Neutron Star Main Sequence: These stars are very rare too, and also look gray like black holes. Not much is known about these stars, but they are supposedly very similar to black hole systems.White Dwarf Main Sequence: These stars are very rare, and look gray, but less gray than black holes, so these could be confused easily for class A stars. There isn't actually much special with white dwarfs, except for their rarity.Wolf-Rayet Giants: These stars aren't as rare as other types of stars, but can be easily be mistaked for class A stars.
They have very extreme stats, especially luminosity. They appear white, although slightly bigger than class A main sequences. Q: How to I exit the game?A: Why would you want to?;)Or you can use alt+f4Q: I bought my Apollo Starbase, but I don't see it!A: It should be on the autopilot as 'apollo deep space'.Q: I bought some mining robots (or something else) on the Galactic Market, but it's not in my cargo holds!A: When buying it, clicking on the results give you more info about whatever you are buying.
With materials, pay attention to where it's being sold from. When buying materials, it will appear in the storage of that station, and if it's a ship, it will be in the hangar. If it's a module, it will be available by refitting the ship.Q: Why can't I place modules onto my ship?A: You can. You need to select the module from the refit menu, and click somewhere to place it on your ship. Don't worry where you put it in most cases, the only modules that are affected by placement are turrets and broadsides. In chat and occasionally in the game itself, you may come across several abbreviations. This is a list of the most used ones.SB: Starbase; referring to the apollo starbase.ISB: The apollo cluster starbaseOSB: An outer starbaseMP: Miner's paradiseSC: Stellar creditsSS: Used as an abbreviation for either an inner system NPC space station, or the apollo starbase.BH: Black HoleMH: Miner's Heaven system, which is no longer used as the system is now Haven.Coils: Not exactly an abbreviation, but a shorter way of saying Superconducting Coils.
Looking to relive the Freelancer experience? Our games like Freelancer list has other space based simulation games for fans of the classic space game.Freelancer was released in 2003 and become somewhat of a cult classic with its unique take on the space genre by incorporating a number of features that had never been attempted let alone combined together in a single game before. The game was intended as a sequel to Starlancer but is a much fuller gaming experience in comparison.The core gameplay elements of Freelancer include trading and combat (within a space setting). Both of these game systems have a great amount of depth that can take time to master which promises players a real challenge. Players step into the shoes of their own spacecraft as they explore a galaxy of star systems. This exploration leads to missions, dogfights and trading opportunities for the player with a number of ways to approach each encounter.Ultimately Freelancer becomes an endless (but very fun) cycle of the player increasing their wealth to improve their ship which in turn opens up new areas of the galaxy and options for gameplay. Beyond the single player experience the game also includes multiplayer support for over 100 players with some private servers still hosted a decade after the original game release.The games like Freelancer here all feature space settings that allow players to either engage in ship to ship combat or trade their way to riches.